Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Spring Cleaning for Your Dentrix Database

My neighborhood had a community yard sale recently and it
got me thinking about de-cluttering and spring cleaning. In our homes we tend
to collect clutter over time and we also do it in our Dentrix database. The
problem with clutter in your Dentrix database is that it can cause reports to
be inaccurate. Let’s look at some of the places we tend to collect clutter in
Dentrix and talk about some ways to clean it up.

1. Patient Database

Does your office have a protocol
for inactivating patients after several failed attempts to schedule? For
example, some offices will attempt to contact a patient three times before
changing the patient’s status in the Dentrix Family File to inactive.

If you have attempted to contact a patient to schedule
and have been unsuccessful, you can send them a letter letting them know
you have been trying to reach them, and since they haven’t responded, you are
going to change their status in your system to inactive.

When I sent the Inactive Patient
letter, I was surprised how many patients responded. They did not want their
status changed to inactive because they thought that meant they had to find a
new dentist. Sending this letter enables you to clean up your patient database
and may motivate some patients to schedule.

You can find the Inactive Patient
letters in the Dentrix Office Manager. Click on Letters & Custom Lists,
then click on Inactive Patient.

When you change a patient’s status to Inactive,
be sure to delete their Continuing Care in their Dentrix Family File and to
mark any outstanding treatment as Rejected, otherwise the patient will continue
to show up on your Unscheduled Treatment Plan List and Continuing Care List.

2. Provider Database

Do you have old providers listed
in your database? This can be frustrating when you are scheduling an
appointment and must choose from many providers. You can inactivate old
providers in the Dentrix Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice
Setup> Practice Resource Setup.

When inactivating a provider, you
must choose a replacement provider. I recommend using a replacement with the
same job classification, replace a doctor with another doctor, a hygienist with
another hygienist.

To inactivate providers, all
computers must be logged out of Dentrix and you should have a current back up.

3. Employer and Insurance Database

Employer and Insurance databases
often get cluttered. Duplicate entries happen in almost every office. It’s a
good idea to have an office discussion about how employer names and insurance carrier
names should be entered to avoid duplicates. For example, do we want to enter
the insurance carrier name as Blue Cross Blue Shield or BC BS?

When entering a new insurance plan
into the Dentrix Family File for a patient, I recommend searching by group
number first to see if that group already exists in your Dentrix database. This
can help to avoid duplicates.

To clean up your insurance and
employer database, you can join plans and purge plans. Open the Dentrix Office
Manager, click Maintenance > Reference, and then either Employer Maintenance
or Insurance Maintenance.

It’s important to note that
Dentrix only allows you to purge insurance plans that are not attached to a patient and
have no outstanding claims attached.

To find out which plans are not
attached to a patient you can run an Insurance Carrier List from the Office
Manager > Reports > Reference > Insurance Carrier List. Check Include
Subscribers. This will provide you with a list of insurance carriers and the
patients they are attached to.

To check for any outstanding
claims, run an Insurance Aging Report. From the Office Manager, choose Reports
> Ledger > Insurance Aging Report.

I recommend purging and joining
employers and insurance plans on an annual basis. Make it a part of your year-end
routine to get a jump on your spring cleaning. You may not have a need to do it
that frequently if you and your team commit to preventing duplicate entries. Create
a policy on how employers and insurance plans should be entered in Dentrix and
train the team. Have them get in the habit of searching for an employer or
insurance plan before entering a new one.

Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.